Spicy Seafood Guacamole

Thisguacamole is alive with heat and salt, because instead of simply tossing chopped onions, cilantro, and chiles into fresh avocado, I mash them up with a generous sprinkle of salt into an intensely flavored, bright green paste.

Only afterward do I scoop out pieces of perfectly ripe avocado and bring it all together into this superb guacamole.

The result is a bit like salad, perfectly dressed in vinaigrette: Every creamy piece of avocado gets coated with the paste, so every bite starts with a pop of flavor, heat, salt and herbs, and ends with the mellow, buttery flesh of the fruit.

It’s sensational, but add a little crab and shrimp marinated in orange juice and chipotle and you have a modern version worthy of the most elegant restaurant, but simple enough for a weeknight dinner at home.

Roberto Santibañez is the chef/owner of Fonda in Brooklyn, NY and author of Truly Mexican, a new cookbook of authentic Mexican dishes for the home kitchen. He is a native of Mexico City and a graduate of Le Cordon Blue in Paris. Roberto spent five years as the culinary director for the popular Rosa Mexicano restaurants in New York City, Atlanta, Miami, Washington, D.C., and Palm Beach, and is the culinary partner of The Taco Truck in Hoboken, NJ.